


s(m)ex on the beach

by brightblackbird



Category: Rookies - Morita Masanori & Related Fandoms
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Canon - Manga, Fairy Tale Elements, Fuck Or Die, Hand Jobs, Humor, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mermaid Sex, Non-Human Genitalia, but not really, mental gymnastics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-05-25
Packaged: 2018-10-12 09:09:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10487268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightblackbird/pseuds/brightblackbird
Summary: Hiratsuka (unemployed human) is annoying, unsuccessful, and trying his hand at a new career path; Imaoka (pilot fish merman) is bored, has bad taste, and comes to enjoy being lied to.





	1. Chapter 1

It was a grey day, and Hiratsuka was having none of it.

More specifically, he was telling himself that he was having none of it, because no one else was there to listen except for reality. And reality was a pretty crappy listener. But he was being very firm, and making a very good case for stopping this nonsense and clearing up if you know what's good for you, and maybe coughing up a little fish while you're at it. Eventually the sky would come around, and the ocean would come around, and the fish would start hopping up on his rod, and he'd be carting those home instead of tossing all these stupid shoes back into the surf at the end of the day.

He just needed a little time to get as good at this as he'd always been at everything else. Meanwhile the sky kept up the act and so did the ocean. 

When the guy popped up up out of the water it was hardly even a surprise. Sure, he'd picked the spot so no one else would show up to bother him, but it figured the first living thing he saw wouldn't even be a fish. Whoever it was, his face wasn't familiar, but that didn't mean they hadn't met. It just wasn't a memorable face. He had kind of a fat nose, and his bangs weren't as soggy as you'd expect, considering where he was, but they hung over his eyes like a curtain. 

"What's this?" He held up some gross brown thing, dripping wet from the ocean.

"How should I know?" _Get the hair out of your eyes or go pull the twenty questions routine on someone who cares._

"You're not looking."

He looked. Just to prove the guy wrong.

"Looks like a clog." Way more of those near working towns, which he wished he didn't know. The pile was about three quarters clogs, all brown and tan because all the boring animals here were brown and tan and so was their stupid boring leather. "Now how about you get lost?"

"Is it yours?"

"No." He didn't want any of these damn shoes and he wasn't about to get stuck with one he hadn't even fished up.

"Are all those yours?"

"No!"

"Whose are they?"

It felt like the right time for a change of subject.

"Where'd you even get that thing?"

The guy pointed over his shoulder absently.

What kind of freak swam to a whole nother island just to ask where a shoe came from?

He wasn't sure exactly what island that would be, but it was damn annoying to meet someone who could swim all the way from there before noon. However far it was. With a single shoe on, too.

"Oh, yeah, _there_ ," he said wisely. "You get a lot of clogs there. Can't hardly turn around without one smacking you in the face."

"You've never been there."

"Yes, I have. I'm very well-traveled."

"I'm always there. I've never seen you." He turned the clog toe-up and watched the last of the seawater pour out. "What's a clog do?"

"I have so been there. I've been to every single island in these parts. I have a scrapbook. I can't show you because I borrowed it out to this guy and he left town with it, but it's very thorough."

"S'not an island."

"I have some sections on peninsulas too."

"I mean it's _down_. In the water. You wouldn't like it."

"Bet you I would." Probably he wouldn't, but who was this floating guy to tell Hiratsuka what he'd like?

"You wouldn't. What's a clog do?"

"I absolutely _would._ You wear it, that's what it does. It's a practical shoe for work and play."

"Uh-uh. You couldn't breathe." He examined the shoe as he said that and inserted a cautious hand. He waggled it back and forth a few times, then looked up. "It's not doing anything."

Both threads of this conversation were getting entirely too weird and cryptic, in Hiratsuka's personal opinion. If there was anything more annoying than someone being weird and cryptic, he couldn't think of it.

"Try putting it on your foot, maybe. Then use it to jog the hell outta my fishing territory." How far out was this freak, anyway? And what was the deal with how he was treading water, like he was just kinda--

_Play it cool, Hiratsuka._

"Where the fuck," he inquired, "are your legs?" Very calm.

"What's a leg?"

"These things," he said, indicating his own, "right here." Very rational.

"Don't have any."

"Oh," he said, very calmly and rationally. "Got it."

"I'm not supposed to tell you," the weird messed-up fish monster thing said. "But I want you to tell me about the shoes. We can trade."

"Hm," Hiratsuka said. "Hmm." He grimaced, just to show he meant business. Not that he knew what that business might be, but he had every intention of meaning it as soon as he found out.

"I can tell you some other stuff," the thing went on after a moment or two, tilting its head up. (Was it _peering at him_?) "If that's not enough. Are they really important?"

"Uhhmm," Hiratsuka said.

"The shoes," it said helpfully, and Hiratsuka was damned if he was going to let some kind of gross fish beast explain to him what they were talking about while he sat around gurgling.

"They're not important," he announced. "Not at all. If they were important there wouldn't be so many of them."

"Oh."

"You can see how there's just one of me. And if that doesn't tell you everything you need to know, I don't know what will."

The fish pondered this for a moment. "I don't think it does."

"Well," said Hiratsuka, spreading his arms in a shrug, "then I don't know what will."

"You could do it," the fish suggested.

"I _could_ do a lot of things," Hiratsuka said warily.

"Tell me what I need to know, I mean." It waited for an answer, and when he was silent it went on, not seeming to grasp the terrible and genuine menace behind his grimace. "What do you do?"

"What do you mean, what do I do?"

"Your job. I don't really do anything," it added. "I'm old enough for a job, but they don't need help anywhere. I just hang around."

Well. As long as they were trading information.

" _I_ am the king."

"Oh." The thing dipped down to nose level in the water and thought for a moment. His bangs were still weirdly dry when he came back up. "No, you're not." 

"Don't sass me, fishman, or I'll have you locked in a dungeon."

"You don't have any guards," the fishman pointed out. "You just come here every day. Alone."

"I'm the prince," Hiratsuka amended. "Basically the same thing. I'm on a special prince assignment right now."

"Are you in charge of the shoes?"

"No! I'm fishing, for your information. I just get mostly shoes, lately." Hiratsuka narrowed his eyes. "Is that your fault? Are you down there eating all my fish?"

"Fish _ing_?"

"Getting fish on my _hook_ , which I've stuck on the end of a _string_ , and pulling them up into the _air_. So I can _eat_ them." He pointed irritably at his rod. "Get it?" 

"Oh."

This whole mermaid claim was starting to sound suspicious. Maybe he was just some kind of dopey recluse who'd been sewed into a fish costume as a prank.

"What do you eat down there if it's not _fish_?"

"We do eat fish. But we don't use hooks. We have farms."

"Aha," Hiratsuka said. "I've farmed many a landfish in my time, as a matter of fact. I just thought it was time for a change of pace."

The fish guy nodded, seeming to understand.

"I get bored too. I have this place I go when that happens. So I'm there a lot. And lots of stuff comes there on the currents. And a bunch of it started being these shoe things. So I followed one of the currents and you were the only thing up here. And your tail was all weird so I got nervous and went home. But then after I slept I thought maybe you were sick and needed help, but your tail was a different color so I got nervous again and left. And then I went to the rocks and read some horror stories and I realized you're one of those human things."

"Ah," Hiratsuka said wisely. "Of course."

"Uh-huh," said the fish guy. "But I didn't see any shoes on the rocks. You never said what they do. Do you club the fish with them?"

"No. They go on your feet."

"What's a feet?"

"A _foot_ is this thing, at the end of a leg, which is where we humans put our shoes so that we can walk around and look stylish. You poor scrub," he couldn't help adding.

The guy looked a little sad.

"I don't get it."

Well, for fuck's sake. Hiratsuka hopped up and demonstrated.

"Like this. Walking! Sometimes there's rocks and stuff. Gotta protect your feet. Or they'll fall off."

"Really?" He was starting to look very alarmed.

"On bloody stumps," Hiratsuka said, very seriously. "I've seen it happen too many times to count."

The creature darted up to the shore at a very unsettling speed, and up onto the sand, where it started to squirm in a very unsettling way.

"Then how come you're not wearing any?" It held the clog out, still trying unsuccessfully to move forward. "Use this one."

"Now wait just a second," Hiratsuka said, in a very firm and commanding way, from his new position 5 meters deeper inland. "Wait just one damn second here."

"You need shoes," the thing insisted. "You said it's dangerous."

"I don't _want_ your shoe," Hiratsuka said, again very firmly, even if he'd gone up an octave or two. "I'm not going to be baited into the ocean with your shoe so you can eat me like you ate the last guy who was wearing it before you _ate him_!"

The fish thing frowned. It didn't drop the shoe, but it frowned. An obvious ruse.

"I didn't eat anybody."

"Then why have I been fishing up piles and piles of empty shoes for weeks?"

"I was gonna ask you that."

"Ha!" Hiratsuka said, and retreated to the safety of the woods.


	2. Chapter 2

He didn't fish for a few days. Why bother, when the seas were apparently full of danger and betrayal and weird fish creatures without even the decency to put clothing on their naked-man half?

As it turned out, that meant the cupboard emptied a whole lot faster, and when the last loaf of bread was down to a single heel he remembered suddenly that the local tavern hadn't been graced with his presence for a while now. He'd been putting it off, hoping to have something really impressive to haul in and show off--he'd kind of publicly announced he would, and all--but when you thought about it, a mermaid was pretty cool in its own right. And not having the actual thing on hand to show off just meant more freedom of description.

Service at the bar was as shoddy as usual.

"Oh," said Hiyama after he'd cleared his throat twice and knocked a plate onto the floor. " _You're_  here."

"One round of the usual, barkeep," Hiratsuka said. Timing was everything. If he played this right, Hiyama might forget about totaling up the bill before he left. 

 Hiyama grunted. Hiratsuka generously chose to interpret that as, "Coming right up, sir." 

He looked around the room. Same motley crew as usual, sitting at the same rickety tables. He was almost overcome by how much he was about to improve their boring little lives.

When he looked back, his drink was in front of him. He took a few sips and got settled so he could see the whole room at once, really engage with the audience. Setting a casual elbow on the table, he said, "Saw a mermaid yesterday."

He waited.

"Saw a mermaid yesterday, folks," he offered, much louder since they clearly hadn't heard.

The response was mixed. A few half-nods, a few rolled eyes.

"Hiyama, man, you've gotta start kicking people out at closing time," said Wakana.

Aniya drained his mug.

"No one could get that fucked up off this stuff."

"This was a real mermaid," Hiratsuka protested. "It talked to me and everything!"

Wakana sighed. "Fine, I'll bite. How big?"

He held his hands out as wide as they'd go.

"About yea big."

Okada snorted.

"The tail part, I mean," he added quickly. "Whole thing was, oh, here to the door at least. Maybe to the middle of the street."

"Sounds like quite a lady," said Wakana.

"Yeah," Hiyama put in from behind the bar, where he was wiping down the shot glasses. "All the fun parts and then just, like, some fish feet."

"I mean," Hiratsuka said, "you know, across. Is what that smaller part was. Tailfin to tailfin. Pretty normal mermaid otherwise. Probably royalty though, she sounded pretty high-class."

"Does that mean her tits weren't out?" Yufune wanted to know.

"It was really more of a magical experience," Hiratsuka said. "Full of childish whimsy and whatever."

"Did you yank her in on the rod?" asked Sekikawa. "Or was it more of a net job?"

"Speaking of rods—" Aniya began.

Hiratsuka sensed it might be time to deploy the strategic retreat. He hadn't counted on such a perverse line of questioning.

"Well," he said, and slammed his drink down, still half-full. "It's been great, but I probably oughtta be getting back to the grind now. Fish don't climb up on that pole all by themselves."

"That's great," Sekikawa said. "You tell your fish girlfriend we said hey."

The road home was a lot gloomier than usual. He picked up a stone and threw it as hard as he could, pretending it was through one of Aniya's walls. Instead of hitting something with a satisfying noise, the stone vanished silently between the trees.

His stomach growled and he tried to be content with the knowledge that a speaker was only as good as his audience. Any kind of quality audience would've let him spin the wondrous tale first, and asked about the tits second. Probably next time he would have to fight them, and out of respect for their families he resolved to keep quiet next time he was in town, so they wouldn't be tempted to cross him.

 

* * *

 

"I always thought mermaids were real," said Yufune. "Dead one washed up by the boats once, didn't it?"

"Yeah, no shit they're real," Aniya said. "But why would one be talking to  _Hiratsuka_?"

Okada had been thinking quietly for a few minutes.

"Has anyone actually seen him fishing?" he asked now.

There was a silence.

"Oh, god," Wakana muttered. "He's probably camped out at somebody's well. We better drop some crap off just so he doesn't starve."

"Drop the tab off while you're at it," Hiyama said. "Fucker chipped my mug." 


	3. Chapter 3

The fishing rod was still there, which was the first strange thing. It was standing upright, planted into the sand where he'd been sitting the other day. Hiratsuka thought about turning around, about heading back to his house and forgetting this ever happened--taking up a different career, like fixing holes in people's roofs or arranging rocks in attractive patterns. But a man had the right to his personal property. And damn it, that stupid mermaid had _talked to him_. 

The fish surfaced when he got close, head and shoulders emerging without warning from the untroubled water. Its hair was still in its face, but other than that it looked—again—like a perfectly normal human who just didn't feel like standing where a normal human would. Then it leaned forward and the tail flashed above the water. It bobbed awkwardly and then found its balance.

"Your shoes floated away," was how it greeted him. "When the tide went in. And your stick. I thought you'd want the stick so I brought it back."

"I can see that," Hiratsuka said, trying to inch close enough to retrieve it. For all he knew the thing could sprout legs if you said the magic words. Probably _thank you_ , if it was going to all this trouble. He wasn't about to get caught up in its sinister hex magic.

"Did you get scared?"

"I'm not scared of anything." _Not as long as you keep your weird fishtailed butt in the water._ He was almost close enough to grab the fishing pole, if the monster would just swim backwards for one second—

"I'm the one who should be scared."

This was true, obviously. Hiratsuka was very intimidating. No one had ever told him so to his face, but that was just because of his menacing aura.

"Tell me more," he said, in a friendly kind of way, because even a lone wolf did get curious about what exactly impressed the other wolves so much that they never tried to make conversation.

"We both eat fish, and I'm the one with a tail."

"So? Are you?"

"Huh-uh."

Hiratsuka weighed that. It didn't sound like the proper attitude.

"You should be. Remember I can have you locked up."

"You're not a prince. You don't have anybody taking care of you."

" _You_ need to correct this backwards view you have of royalty. A modern prince can be as self-sufficient as he wants."

"Okay."

Damn, he was good at this. It didn't sound like he'd accepted the basic prince concept, but he wasn't rejecting it hard enough that Hiratsuka could go back to it without sounding desperate. The one rule when you were trying to sell something was never to sound desperate.

There were a lot of rules, actually, but that was the important one. Usually.

But anyway, who was this stupid mermaid thing to decide who was and wasn't royalty, when he'd never so much as set foot on land? It was judgmental, was what it was. And it took a special kind of nerve to be not just judgmental, but _right_. 

"Hey, what's your name, anyway?"

"Imaoka."

He could already tell this Imaoka was going to be a lot of trouble. He had a troublesome look about him, like he was plotting something. Something very dangerous that was probably going to mean a lot of trouble for Hiratsuka. And maybe even some other unimportant people too.

His fingers brushed the fishing pole.

"What's yours?"

He _hated_ being interrupted while he was contemplating the future.

"What?" he snapped. Imaoka was looking very pleased about something, and he hated that too. How dare he be happy about all the trouble he was planning to cause?

"Your name."

"Hiratsuka." That much was probably safe to admit. Anyway, he hadn't said it in a while, and he liked saying it. It had a nice ring to it, a solid little reminder of his own existence. It carved out a space for him in the universe, if only for a second or so.

"Hiracchi," the mermaid said thoughtfully.

That carved out a very ugly space in the universe.

"Hiratsuka," he repeated, enunciating very clearly. Probably mermaids got water in their ears a lot. "My name is Hi-ra-tsu-ka."

"I heard you."

All that salt water had shriveled his brain up, then. Nothing Hiratsuka could do about that.

"Hiracchi," Imaoka said again. "Now you can't be scared of me."

"I never _was_ scared of you. Or of anything." He sat down and crossed his legs just to prove it.

"You ran away," Imaoka said, maddeningly sure of himself. "How come you came back?"

That was a damn good question.

"Well," Hiratsuka said. "You know. Pretty much just had a question."

"About what?"

"I mean, you said something about the rocks, and stories, and it didn't make any sense. And I explained legs and fishing to you very carefully, so frankly that just doesn't seem fair."

"Oh," Imaoka said. "Umm. They're just some rocks. We carve stuff in them. That's where I saw the things swimming... up, like you were"—he gestured straight up—"in this stuff that's not water."

"Air."

"Yeah. That stuff."

"Ah," Hiratsuka said. He paused. "We have books. You can carry them." He paused again. "How'd you get back in the water?"

"Tide came in. Where do you carry them to?"

"Oh, you know, here and there. Your way doesn't sound as useful." He'd never read a book, personally, but they came from land just like him, and he wanted to make it clear that made them superior. "See, we have this stuff called paper. You can carry it around, and write without using a chisel."

"Where's it come from?"

"It's a very thin kind of rock." As soon as he'd said it he realized it probably grew on farms instead, but there was no room for correcting yourself in a battle of words. Or at any other time, really. You doubled down, or you admitted defeat. Besides, it was the honor of the surface world on the line here. "You gotta go way, way underground to find it. But the trip back is easier because it's so light. You can get a whole shelf's worth in one trip."

"Underground?" Imaoka frowned. "I thought you walked on the ground. You can't go through it like water."

"We do walk on it," Hiratsuka said, really warming to the subject now, "but behold." He scooped a handful of sand and let it drain into a pile a few inches away. "You move it, and it stays where it's told." He jammed his fist into the hole and found it didn't quite fit. "Nothing but air left in there now," he said, digging down further as subtly as he could. "Emptiness. Void. And _that_ "—he pointed up very quickly, launching a thin spray of sand—"is the sun. It warms us by day, and when we need to sleep it leaves in disgust at our weakness. But we have lamps, so it comes crawling back eventually, just to feel needed."

"I know what the sun is," Imaoka said, wiping the sand off the top of his head. "We can see it down there."

"Well, it obviously likes us land people better," Hiratsuka snapped. "It gave us fire."

"What's that?"

Now that was a puzzler.

"Magic," was all he could think of.

"Oh." Imaoka nodded and seemed satisfied.

"They're very small suns," Hiratsuka went on, because satisfied was never good enough when you could achieve _awed_ , and because an audience that couldn't walk into town to ask annoying follow-up questions was just about the best inspiration you could ask for. "Babies. We raise them as pets. I have one at home myself, but it messed on the rug so it's grounded."

He fully expected the next question to be _What's a rug?_ , and he was pretty eager himself to hear what the answer would be, when Imaoka asked, instead, "How smart are they?"

"Umm," said Hiratsuka.

"We have seahorses," Imaoka explained. "And then we have turtles, and they're smarter. And then dolphins are way smarter. Like having another person in your cave. Except you can't keep them in a cave because they die."

Hiratsuka considered the rules of the world he was building. "Fires," he said, "are pretty dumb."

"Not like another person?"

"No," Hiratsuka said. "They mostly just sit there. Unless they're still learning the ropes. They can get pretty wild if you're not careful."

"But it's not," Imaoka said, still pressing, "like another person."

"Not at all. They're downright stupid."

"D'you have anything that's like another person? In your cave?"

"I live," Hiratsuka said, "in a fortress of solitude."

"You mean alone."

"Basically. It's very liberating."

"Okay," Imaoka said. He smiled.

Not for the first time, the conversation was taking a turn that Hiratsuka found mysterious. He wondered if maybe they were actually speaking different languages that just happened to almost sound the same, then dismissed the thought. If that was true it would be very annoying. Therefore it wasn't. He had some pretty cool ideas going on here, truth be told. He was spending the sweat of his brow to build this ignorant fishman a wonderland of imagination, untouched by the dullness of reality, and he wasn't about to let that fall by the wayside just because the poor slob was interested in all the wrong details.

"Fire," he said, "takes a very strong personality to tame. I happen to be one of the few who's mastered the art. When it behaves it can be used to heat a room, or to cook a meal."

"What's cooking?"

Now they were getting somewhere.

"Heating the food up until it gets all crispy. You can eat fish raw if you want, but making that takes"— _kill_ —"well, we can't all like raw fish."

"We eat it raw," Imaoka said. "Some places have vents you can hold it over if you want it hot, but we don't have any around here. I heard it makes the meat all..." He gestured. "Thick. It sounds gross."

"It's not gross," Hiratsuka said. "It's a triumph of human ingenuity. Proof of the man-fire alliance against fish."

"Are you hungry now? 'Cause I brought you some."

Hiratsuka backed away. (As well as he could, being seated.) He'd almost forgotten the danger here.

"How'd you know I was gonna be here today?"

"I've been bringing them every day. Not the same ones," he added. "They're fresh."

"I don't see any fish."

"They're over there." He nodded to the right. "Fenced in."

Hiratsuka scooted backwards up the beach much faster and much farther.

"And you think I'm just gonna dive in and check? What are you, some kind of hunter? Is this some sick game to you?"

The mermaid was frowning again. "It's just a normal thing. I'm listening to _your_ normal things."

"Oh yeah? What're they fenced _in_ , their own intestines?"

"We kind of—" the mermaid started. "Um, you know. With water. We kinda box them in." He pursed his lips, looking frustrated. "I can't really explain it."

"A likely story."

"I'm not trying to eat you," the mermaid insisted. "If we ate land things, we'd all live up here near the shore."

"I'll tell you what," Hiratsuka said. "You bring them up and leave them here while I get the fire started. And then you get the hell out of here, and I'll be the judge of whether they're safe or not."

"You'll get mad if I go away," the mermaid said, pouting. "And you'll yell at me tomorrow and pretend you thought I was hiding to jump out and eat you."

"You are delusional from hunger," Hiratsuka said. "You can eat one fish while I cook the others if you promise to regain your senses and stop talking nonsense. Then you can eat a cooked one and tell me how much it's changed your life."

Imaoka was still waiting patiently when he came back with the firewood, and the fish were also waiting, except they were dead. Not gutted, just kind of lying there on the wet sand, freshly dead.

Highly suspicious. Probably poison.

His stomach growled.

"You're hungry," the thing said, flitting around nervously. "How long does the cooking thing take? You should eat them now."

Shit, it was gonna come up on the sand again. Maybe _this_ was its leg-sprouting ritual. _Not today, fucker._ He made a skillful, deft swipe and returned to the firewood with a single fish, using the other arm to wipe the wet sand off his front. He was a man of many talents.

He kept a careful eye on Imaoka while he started the fire. The first sparks drew him closer, almost onto the sand, but as the flames crackled to life he darted back, there one second and gone the next; reduced to a pair of blond bangs and a very mistrustful pair of eyes peeping out above the water.

"So," Hiratsuka said, after he'd flung the cooked fish into the surf from a safe distance. "About that fish boxing thing."

"Uh-huh." Imaoka cautiously approached the shore again, eyes on the fire and the fish visible underwater in his hands.

"You don't have a word for it or anything?"

"I guess it's magic. Like your thing with the fire." He gnawed the fish's head off thoughtfully.

Hiratsuka looked at the fire.

"Oh," he said. "Yeah. Of course. But it's not, you know, some special thing, right? You're not the only one who can do that?"

"We can all do it. It's how we farm them."

"Good," Hiratsuka said. "Just wondering. Because not many humans are as good with fire as me."

"I mean, I think we all can," Imaoka said. "Maybe some of us can't."

"Fire's mighty hungry tonight," Hiratsuka observed. He fed some more brush into it until it crackled and shot up a few sparks that sent Imaoka into retreat again. Who needed company that could beat you at your own game?

It was a few minutes before Imaoka returned. He held up the skeletal remains of the cooked fish.

"It was okay. Kinda chewy."

"Unless you can admit that fish changed your life," Hiratsuka said, "I don't wanna hear it."

Imaoka set the skeleton on the surface of the water and watched it sink out of sight.

"I do feel different," he said. "But I'm not sure it was the fish that did it."

Hiratsuka nodded insightfully.

"That'll be the fire. Let me tell you of its many uses."

Imaoka looked at him for a few moments, not saying anything.

"You can keep talking," he said slowly, "as long as you want."

Lunch, Hiratsuka found, was agreeing with him. The mermaid guy had good taste in fish, at least. Now that his stomach was full for the first time in a week, there didn't seem much harm in in a little give and take, if this guy wanted an education that badly.

"Fires," he began, "were first tamed about a hundred years ago, for their usefulness in battle."


	4. Chapter 4

 Hiratsuka had never had anything against mornings; actually, they were the best part of the day. So full of hope and possibilities, even if afternoons never managed to deliver. And this was an especially fine morning, because some secret admirer had decided to grace his doorstep with a couple of chickens. His first guess had been a _zashiki warashi_ , but the chickens were dead and chicken slaughter didn't seem like a job for a small child, no matter how ageless a child it was. Also, he didn't have a _zashiki_. But whoever it was, he was determined to live up to their expectations. The sun painted a thick stripe across the water, and he was ready to share the chickens whether or not his guest wanted any.

In the strictest sense, he wasn't repaying any favors, since the chickens had just landed in his lap. But it was the thought that counted, and he was as proud of them as if he'd hunted them down himself. Surely even the mysterious donor who'd left them couldn't have matched the generosity filling Hiratsuka's heart. Nobility of spirit, that was what he had. It made giving back so much easier.

"What's wrong with its skin?" Imaoka's verdict was swift and harsh.

"They're called feathers." Maybe he should've plucked it before tossing it in the water. "They let you soar through the air, escaping the tyranny of the ground."

"I don't like them." He wrinkled his nose. "It's making everything smell funny. Take it back."

"I'm not eating a wet chicken. Throw it away on _your_ side if you don't want it."

Imaoka released the hen and they both watched as it floated gently back to shore. It came to rest on the wet sand between them, pathetic and alone, the waves shifting it up and down slightly as they continued to lap impassively against the beach.

"The water smells funny now," Imaoka said again.

"Show a little respect," said Hiratsuka. "She was probably somebody's mother."

"Whose?"

Hiratsuka looked down at the other chicken, which he was currently roasting on a spit, and averted his eyes quickly.

"Look," he said. "Just come get that thing off the sand. Swim it away from the beach."

"I don't want it out here. I don't like it."

He grabbed the fishing pole, which had been lying around unused, and gave the chicken a few helpful pokes back in the direction of the ocean.

"It's wet. You're wet. Get acquainted."

"Oh." Imaoka was almost on the sand before he realized it, and he took a hurried step back. "You don't want to touch it."

"I have no feelings about this chicken."

"Okay." Imaoka dipped beneath the waves with it, where his whole body twisted for a moment, looking for something. Finding it, he darted off, still underwater. When he reappeared the chicken was gone. "It's in the current now. You're safe."

He was hiding a grin underwater again. Now that Hiratsuka was closer to the water, it was clear that his teeth were extremely sharp and dangerous. He hadn't used them for anything so far except eating fish, but Hiratsuka hadn't abandoned all caution yet. His astonishing reflexes were ready for deployment at the slightest hint of trouble.

"If you piss me off too much I might just take you home and keep you in a tank."

"'Kay."

"I could put wheels on it and take you on tour," he said, warming to the subject. "I bet I'd make some serious bank off a real live mermaid."

Imaoka thought for a moment.

"Would you feed me?"

"If you made me enough money." Let it not be said he wasn't generous.

"You'd have to get the fish from someone else." The water rippled over his tail as it waggled suspiciously. "If I'm in a tank."

Hiratsuka put down the rod, which he'd been hanging onto because it felt like his only weapon, and pointed fiercely.

"Are you laughing at me?!"

"Just at what you're saying."

"Don't forget I could also take you home and eat you." He picked the rod back up so he could point it in a threatening kind of way. He liked people to keep a little healthy fear of him, for their own safety—he was a rolling stone and a wild, unpredictable man—and it seemed to him that shouldn't be so difficult when he was sitting here trying to fish up a dinner that looked exactly like the bottom half of his unwanted guest.

Imaoka kept bobbing there placidly.

"You'd get hungry again once you ran out of me."

"Look, is there something _wrong_ with you?!"

"I'onno." Imaoka dipped underwater again, eyes open and still fixed on him thoughtfully (and was that creepy, or what? No bubbles, either). Finally he resurfaced. "You keep saying stuff you don't mean."

"I mean everything I say. My word is my bond."

"You're gonna take me home?" Again with the tail wiggling.

Hiratsuka contemplated Imaoka flopping on the floor of his cottage, surveying the decor with his weird fishy eyes and judging it.

"My maid's been sick lately," he said. "The house isn't up to standard for guests. But if you piss me off enough I'll make a note of it, and someday when you're least expecting it you'll wake up in a tank. With wheels on it."

"What're wheels?"

"That's what happens when you put little fake feet on something," Hiratsuka said, "and they get all messed up and round."

"You're always saying stuff that's not true."

"I'm giving the universe suggestions."

"You said it was dangerous not wearing shoes," Imaoka said reproachfully.

"It _is_ dangerous sometimes. How do you think the fake feet get messed up? It's because people forget their furniture needs shoes too." He felt like he was losing ground somehow. "Anyway, if you're so damn smart how come you believed me?"

"Why'd you say it in the first place?"

"Why'd _you_ come crawling up on the sand and scare the living shit out of me?!"

"You wouldn't've gotten scared if you hadn't scared me."

"Do I look like the kind of fool who'd sit around forgetting to wear shoes if it was dangerous?"

"Yes." Not a second of hesitation. The poor creature was a terrible judge of humans. No wonder he wasn't intimidated.

"Any other wrong opinions you'd like to share before I fry you up for dinner?"

"You're fishing too close to shore," Imaoka offered. He seemed to hesitate before he said it. "You might not get so many shoes if you went somewhere else."

"I'll have you know," Hiratsuka said, "this beach is guarded by a fence and a great big sign reading NO FISHING—and what that means is there's something very special in these waters, just waiting for the right man to come along and fish it up. I know destiny when I see it."

"Maybe it was me," Imaoka suggested.

Hiratsuka examined him critically. He was maybe a meter and a half long. The fish half was striped white and black, dull enough that it vanished into the darkness of the ocean unless you were trying real hard to focus on it. Or unless he hung out in the shallow water like a dumbass, which he seemed to do a lot. It split at the end and faded away into two kind of raggedy forks.

"It's not _you_. It's something cool. Something life-changing. Something I can sell."

"Oh."

Imaoka refused to try the roasted chicken, either, which was very rude, in Hiratsuka's personal opinion, but he stayed long into the afternoon.

"I can keep bringing fish," he said, as Hiratsuka started to gather his things. "Until you catch whatever that special thing is."

"See that you do." A sandal whizzed past Imaoka's ear. He'd been too busy talking to catch all that much today, but it meant less to throw back, at least. "I'm giving a lot back, here."


	5. Chapter 5

Hiratsuka had abandoned pants somewhere around the third day of his new career as a fisherman. The beach was hot even when it was cloudy, the _happi_ was long enough, no one was there to see him, and he didn't care anyway if they did. He had every right to wear what he wanted, when he wanted. He almost felt sorry for Imaoka, not having that freedom of choice in his life.

On the other hand, that meant he'd probably grown up surrounded by topless ladies everywhere. Which didn't make Hiratsuka jealous at all, because as an enlightened land-dweller he understood that the sex parts were best appreciated when you had to work for them. That was how you got music and beautiful paintings and shit: somebody else showing off until his chosen mate was ready to take her top off.

Clothes, it turned out, weren't the top question on Imaoka's list, but he did get around to it eventually, in the early afternoon of a pleasantly warm day.

"Do you just use the legs for walking? How come they change colors?"

"One question at a time," said Hiratsuka. Education was difficult enough without your pupils getting all interested and involved. "A thoughtful student is a quiet student."

Imaoka thought quietly. "The changing colors first."

"I have," Hiratsuka explained, "a variety of leggings used to cover them. Humans use clothing so the sun doesn't cook us, and so we don't get distracted by indecent thoughts. In their natural state the legs look like _so_." He indicated the concept of Leg with a sweeping gesture beginning at the hip. "These happen to be pretty good examples."

"I know. I looked a bunch when you were swimming earlier."

That was a little disturbing.

"Let me know when you're watching me." 

"Okay."

Honestly. He'd spent the whole morning thinking nobody was paying attention to him, and the whole thing could have been avoided if this fishman had the slightest bit of common sense.

"What's between the legs?"

That jolted him back to attention.

"Uhhh," he said. "Whatever do you mean?"

"You've got that stuff wrapped around it. So there must be something important there. Does it fall off without them?"

"It absolutely does not," said Hiratsuka. "It's attached with cords of solid steel. You know," he added, when Imaoka gave him a suspicious look, "in the sense that my willpower is very steely."

"But what _is_ it?" Imaoka pressed.

"Well," Hiratsuka began. "You know. Nothing all that special. It's really not very..."

He'd found it. The one truth that would not be stretched.

"Look," he said. "It's very, very important, actually. It's just private."

"How come?"

"It just is. And this happens to be a very advanced way of tying up your—"

"Is it embarrassing?"

Hiratsuka grabbed the _fundoshi_ and yanked.

"I have _nothing_ to be ashamed of." He flexed subtly to make sure he didn't.

"What's it do?"

"It—you, uh, well, you pee with it, mostly." _What the hell does_ yours _do?!_

"That's it?" Imaoka looked underwhelmed. _(Disappointed?_ No. No way. It just didn't make sense.) "It seems like it should do more."

"Well, if you have a girl—you know, uh, you can... make a baby." He coughed. "That's pretty important." Fuckin' ignorant mermaids. You were supposed to be able to laugh about this shit with other guys, not have to _explain it_. No wonder all he was feeling was embarrassed.

"You mean mating? That's not really important."

Every word seemed to be sending Hiratsuka further into some kind of surreal dream world.

"Okay," he said, in a desperate attempt to reassert himself. "End of lesson." He reached for the unrolled cloth, as if being less naked would force everything to make sense again.

"Don't," Imaoka protested.

"Why not?!"

"I dunno. I'm not done looking." He did look interested, that much was true. For all he didn't seem to buy how important it was, his eyes were getting wider by the second. "How do you walk with it there? It's so big."

Hiratsuka shoved the _fundoshi_ over the danger area before he even had time to register the twitch. "Quit l _ooking!_ "

"Why?"

"I mean, yeah, it's big, they're not all this big, I got somethin' pretty special going on here—but" —he made a desperate grab at the one thing he still understood completely "—of course mating's important! It's like, the most important...! What, do you guys grow on trees?! How do _you_ do it?!"

Imaoka looked put out (did it look like food to him?!), and now mystified.

"What're you talking about trees for? Do they have those too?"

"Look," Hiratsuka said. " _You've_ gotta have something. You can't say all that shit and not tell me what you've got going on."

"Going on?"

"Down there! You know, how you, uh, make little mermaids or whatever."

"Um," said Imaoka. "Okay." He let his tail drift forward and rolled over onto his back. He shivered a little, and a faint silvery mist settled onto his stomach, right where scale faded into flesh.

Silence.

"Well?"

"That was it."

"What do you mean, that was it? You didn't _do_ shit!"

"You have to pay better attention next time," Imaoka said. "How d'you do it?"

"You—you put it in the girl and it feels good! What's the point if it only lasts—?!"

"This feels good."

"For what, a second?! When I jack off it takes like 10 minutes!"

"10 _minutes?_ " Utter bafflement. "You don't get eaten by something if you hang around feeling good for 10 minutes?"

"You know the fuck _what?_ " The _fundoshi_ hit the ground a second time. "If there's one thing I hate, it's someone trying to bullshit me. There's no way in hell you guys are that _beyond backwards_ down there!"

The water was colder than he expected, and Imaoka was lighter. He was halfway out of the water before he registered either of those things. He'd had some kind of idea that the human half would be way heavier, but the two sides balanced pretty evenly, and there wasn't any fish-out-of-water flopping, either. A pair of arms grabbed around his neck, then slipped off a second later, even before he dropped his armload unceremoniously onto the beach.

The hot sand stuck to his legs as he knelt to examine it. Imaoka coughed.

"Umm," he said. "Your arms are really..." He gave a shuddering gasp like his lungs were spasming in all the air they could get, and then went limp. The gills on his neck fluttered for a second before squeezing shut.

He kind of wondered if the guy was going into shock from getting hauled up into the open air, but then a breathy little _hhuh_  slipped out and the awkward truth made itself clear. 

It didn't _look_ like anything he'd ever seen before, but the spot where it was coming out didn't leave a lot of room for doubt. It was all fleshy—human fleshy, like the inside of your mouth. It vanished into a slit that probably kept it hidden most of the time, and at the other end it curled upwards slightly, thin and spiny and ending in a sharp point.

It felt kind of spongy, and the spines were only a little bit less so. They weren't hard or anything, just firmer than the rest of it. When Hiratsuka touched one something runny and clear oozed from it onto his hand.

"Gross!" He yanked it back and wiped it clean on his shirt. "Fucked up," he added. "So, uh, how 'bout you put that away now?"

Imaoka whimpered and his tail twitched weakly. It didn't look like he could answer, much less move.

Was he imagining things or was it getting _bigger?_  

It twitched, almost like it was swelling from the air. A few extra bits almost like flower petals or the arms of a starfish were—well, blossoming near the base, and the color was deepening into red. The petals were orangey with some delicate webbing around the edges, like the trimming on a fancy dress, that oozed a thicker version of that clear stuff. It smelled kind of sweet, he realized. Probably to get the other mermaid all revved up for some mating.

Except there wasn't going to be any mating, because there was no lady mermaid. Just him and the one pathetic boy mermaid gasping for air on dry land, with some kind of weird golden dickflower sprouting out of his crotch that wasn't even a crotch because he didn't have legs.

Imaoka opened his mouth as if he was getting ready to explain that actually, this was all pretty normal. It was lucky for him he didn't get anything out, because then Hiratsuka really would've had to smack him one. Instead he just coughed violently and then set about wheezing like his throat was being slowly excavated for the first time.

_Great._ On the bright side, Hiratsuka wasn't a murderer. He was pretty sure there were some lungs starting to work in there. On the not so bright side, this weird mermaid dick was all his responsibility now. Because Imaoka was definitely not up to the task.

Could mermaids die from blue balls? Or blue fins? Or whatever the hell was going on down there?

Not for the first time, Hiratsuka wished he hadn't been born the noble, upstanding man he was. The kind of man who didn't bother asking himself whether, legally, walking away would count as murder or manslaughter or fishslaughter. The kind of man who was willing to get his hands dirty, or even sticky, in the name of not leaving a big unsightly fishy corpse laying around on what was really a very lovely beach.

It was squishy and warm. There were some ridges on the top, and he tried to concentrate on those instead of the spines just in case they snapped off by accident.

Actually, what if you _had_ to snap them off? What if they shrank back in and poisoned the mermaid afterwards unless you got rid of them? Thanks to Imaoka's goddamn vagueness, he was operating without instructions in the most delicate procedure of his life.

He poked one and it oozed at him again. Probably they were just there to do that and make the water smell good. Which meant they couldn't go falling off afterwards, unless mermaids only ever jizzed once in their life. He took hold of the whole thing for the first time and shivered a little bit. There was a pulse rushing inside it, and he tried his best not to feel like it was flooding into his own, or some weird shit like that. It was perfectly normal, he reminded himself, for your heart to be pounding pretty hard when you were performing life-saving actions.

He braved an upward glance. Imaoka was breathing now, but still gasping. Drops of water were beading on his gills, both the neck ones and a second pair on his sides that Hiratsuka hadn't noticed before. They were squeezed shut pretty tight now, turning pink with the effort. Probably his lungs had taken over. So maybe—

A long, low moan made it clear he wasn't planning on taking over any time soon.

"Hiracchi...!"

There were a few drops of water pooled in the hollow of his throat that were really kind of annoying to look at. It had to be bugging him too, and his arms were still just lying there, so, for fuck's sake.

His throat was cooler than the... other part Hiratsuka was touching, but there was that stupid pulse again. Like touching a static charge with both hands at once. He shook his hand dry and watched a few more drops of water slide down from Imaoka's chin and settle below his adam's apple. There was a halo of wet sand around Imaoka, almost undisturbed at the arms and then spreading out into a blob once it got to the tail, which was starting to twitch a little harder. His hair should've been plastered to his face but it was dry, of course. It just sat there blocking his eyes off to be annoying, as usual. 

Imaoka squeaked and he looked away, feeling awkward even though it wasn't _his_ fault Imaoka didn't even have the decency to make some distracting faces. He gave up trying to find something interesting to pay attention to and settled into working the stupid mer-dick with its stupid thumping pulse and smooth, slippery parts that only existed so your thumb would slide down into one of the stupid thick, spongy spines. _Nothing_ he wanted to think about.

At last the flower petal things curled gently up around his hand like an embrace, and it was only after they'd shuddered there warm and wet, Imaoka finally managing to press up into his hand with a gasp, and drooped back down, as exhausted as the rest of him, that Hiratsuka remembered to worry they might try taking his hand off. But they looked pretty harmless now. All they did was tremble a little when he poked them, and the appreciative sigh from Imaoka didn't make it sound like his dick was in the habit of munching on people who did him favors. So, that was good news.

He wiped some of the slimy grossness into the sand, not that it helped much, and Imaoka made a weak grab for his hand. He missed, but it was surprisingly thoughtful under the circumstances, so Hiratsuka obliged him by wiping some sand and slime onto his hand. Then he noticed the more obvious solution and got the remaining mess safely transferred to Imaoka's stomach.

"Your way is better," Imaoka said, still panting.

"Yeah," said Hiratsuka. "You better wipe your hand on there too."

"I mean the mating."

"Uhhh," Hiratsuka said. "I wouldn't say mating, exactly."

"You said that's how land people use it. It's on the outside and you do stuff with it."

"If that was a land people dick I wouldn't have done stuff with it in a million years!"

"Dick," Imaoka said very thoughtfully, almost to himself. "Dick. How do you talk about more than one? Is it a normal word or one of the funny ones?"

Fuck. This was too mysterious to ignore.

"Dicks," Hiratsuka admitted. "It's a normal one. You don't have a name for it? How do you _live_ down there?"

Imaoka shrugged. "I didn't know I had one. You're s'posed to just spend a couple seconds over the eggs."

_"_ ** _EGGS?!_  **"

Imaoka started struggling to sit up, apparently not taking much interest in this absolutely mind-blowing conversation.

"You live in the same cave as a girl, and after a while she lays a clutch of eggs somewhere. Then you visit them and then your babies hatch after another while." He gave up struggling. "My arms still don't work."

"So," Hiratsuka started, refusing to let him lead the conversation, "you came out of an _egg_ —so what, you've got, like 15 brothers?!"

"I guess. I think a couple are sisters. I don't really remember."

"You don't remember?!"

He shrugged again. "There's a lot of them. Help me with my arms."

"Stop fucking telling your arms don't move while you're shrugging at me!"

"They only do one thing," Imaoka said. "Help me up. You tell me where you came from while you help me stand."

" _Sit_ ," Hiratsuka corrected. "That's half a stand. You need legs for the full maneuver." That small victory won, he felt secure enough to help Imaoka into a seated position.

Actually, it was more of a leaning position. More of a being-held-up-with-both-arms-with-his-fishy-butt-right-in-Hiratsuka's-lap position.

"You take over the second your arms start working again," he warned.

"Okay," Imaoka said, nuzzling into his shoulder. "Where'd you come from if it wasn't an egg?"

"That's a very personal question," Hiratsuka said. "But the second part was when I was a beautiful baby. Then in part three, I became a beautiful man."

"I know that part," Imaoka said. "It sounds like the first part was the important one."

"Well," Hiratsuka said. " _I_ was carried to my parents on the waves one moonlit night. But keep in mind not everybody's parents are that classy."

"You're not explaining anything," Imaoka said. He started to chew gently on the neck area of Hiratsuka's _happi_. "How come you wear stuff up here too? What's underneath?"

Things had to be pretty damn boring under the sea if they didn't even bother getting to second base while they made their babies. So it was funny how they clearly didn't bother with personal space. You wouldn't think those two things would go hand in hand.

"Stop that," Hiratsuka said. "I paid good money for this thing." Those goddamn teeth were _shredding_ the fabric.

"You said you'd tell me something interesting. But you're not."

"My mother," Hiratsuka said, very threateningly, "is a saint."

"How?"

"Don't fucking lick me! I may have spent some time in her stomach," he admitted reluctantly. "Though how I got there is a mystery."

Imaoka stopped chewing. "That's awful," he said, wide-eyed. "I could never do that to my mother."

"I'll have you know that carrying me was a magical event," Hiratsuka snapped. "You never forget that kind of bonding experience."

"Oh," Imaoka said. "Well, maybe if I knew her better." He prodded Hiratsuka's stomach thoughtfully, then opened up the _happi_ to examine it closer. "How big is yours?"

"I already showed you once!"

"I mean your mother. Are human women really tall? Is it the air?"

"Human women," Hiratsuka said, trying hard to sound like the authority he was, "are normal-sized. The babies start out very small."

"Oh."

"Like a grain of sand, actually. Women learn this secret magic that makes them grow. Then they get all fat because they have to eat a lot to keep casting the magic. Then they get sick of that, even when the baby is as delightful as me, and they cast the final spell that makes the baby pop out."

"Out of where?"

Hiratsuka pointed at his belly button.

Imaoka stared, his eyes getting wider and rounder. "How big is the baby when it comes out?"

"Well," Hiratsuka said, doing some mental guesswork, "the belly gets pretty big so there's a protective cushion in case the lady falls down. But probably—I mean, usually—the baby's about the size of her head." He looked down at his own belly button. That still seemed like a pretty painful job. But he'd committed now. "That part stretches," he added. "Kinda. There's a magic spell for it."

Imaoka was silent for a few moments.

"I think," he said finally, "my mother would be glad she's not a land woman."

Hiratsuka tried not to think about the horrible fate he'd just sentenced his own mother to.

"So," he said, "what was that thing with your... thing? Air poisoning or something?"

"The power of love?"

"What?"

"Or maybe 'cause I was choking," said Imaoka. "I don't think it's supposed to do that."

"Oh," Hiratsuka said. "Are you gonna die?"

Imaoka thought about it.

"I don't think so."

"Good," Hiratsuka said, for the sake of being polite.

It _was_ good. Shit. When had that happened?

"I probably saved your life, you know," he said, to deflect suspicion. "You owe me a life debt."

"You pulled me out of the water in the first place."

"You provoked me!"

"It happened before," Imaoka said. "The choking part. When you left me on the beach. I could've told you if you'd waited."

"Well," Hiratsuka said. " _You_ failed to warn me. That makes it your fault."

"You wouldn't've listened anyway. But," he added, "I didn't really mind. Maybe that's why the second part happened."

"I saved your _life_ ," Hiratsuka said again.

"I don't think so," Imaoka said. "But it felt nice. We can trade. Yours is on the outside already, so it'll be easy."

He shifted his tail back onto the sand with an effort until he was lying in a straight line, then leaned down and opened his mouth.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!" said Hiratsuka. "Whoa!" he added, just to be clear.

Imaoka looked up, mouth only half closed and revealing a number of very good reasons for Hiratsuka to clamp his knees shut and never open them again. "Uh?"

"Don't even _think_ about it," Hiratsuka said, scooting back a few paces just to be safe. He was having a hard time getting his knees together, but he made the best of it. "Don't even think about thinking."

"You checked mine."

"Yeah, and I left it attached! Unlike your plan for me!"

"I could use my hand," Imaoka said, looking disappointed for some mysterious reason. "Like you did."

When you thought about it, it was pretty scummy to go around letting people owe you and holding it over their head. The moral, upstanding thing to do was to let them pay you back right away. And Hiratsuka was upstanding in a couple of different ways right now. Probably because he'd never gotten around to putting the _fundoshi_ back on.

Speaking of which.

"Look," he said. "Let me get the sand out of my ass first, and I'll consider your offer."

"What's an—"

"Shh. Thinking."

He thought. A life debt was definitely worth at least one blowjob, but in times of crisis, it was important to be flexible about payment. In the name of staying able to pee standing up.

"Fair trade is an important part of human culture," he explained, reseating himself where he'd started out and spreading his legs a little.

You would've thought mermaid hands would be colder from all that swimming around, but maybe the sun had warmed them up.

"Uh-huh," Imaoka said, displaying a shocking lack of interest in conversation.

Hiratsuka closed his eyes and found it in his heart to forgive this rudeness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The setting is sort of a fusion of Japanese fairytale settings with some European influence due to the mermaid theme (hence mentions of kings, clogs, etc.). Think Urashima Tarou as far as Hiratsuka's clothing goes, but without the grass skirt blocking Imaoka's view. Hiratsuka, being Hiratsuka, has chosen to abandon the pants that are sometimes part of the outfit and stick with the leggings that are basically just legwarmers.


	6. Chapter 6

 "I wanna go home with you," Imaoka said, nuzzling closer into his lap. He seemed to have gotten the hang of switching from gills to lungs by now. His fishy half was spread across the sand and his other half was on its side, squishing Hiratsuka's legs. (Pants _on_ , as was the rule when the teeth were out.) He had both of his hands around one of Hiratsuka's, which he seemed to find very interesting.

"Why?" Hiratsuka demanded. With his other hand he tugged resentfully at a lock of hair that insisted on staying as soft and dry and fluffy as ever, even with all the saltwater and sun. "Looks to me like you've got it pretty easy out here."

"You're at home more." Imaoka squeezed his hand tighter. "I hate waiting for you."

"You'd get slime on my floor," Hiratsuka protested. He'd explained floors a few days ago, he was pretty sure.

"We don't have to do anything slimy on the floor."

Hiratsuka considered. "No, we kinda do."

Imaoka pursed his lips and retreated behind his bangs.

"Listen," Hiratsuka said. "I'm not deadlifting you into a futon and tucking you in every night. So that means I'd have to get some blankets just to put them right on the floor. You don't wanna sleep on the floor."

Imaoka revealed part of an eye and peered up curiously. "What's sleeping?"

That was a lot to absorb. He scritched under Imaoka's chin to shut him up long enough to think.

"Look," he said after a while. "There's this tiny little river thing near my house. A brook or whatever. You could swim up that and wait outside at night. I can put a second window in near the ground so you can see more."

Imaoka stopped purring.

"I don't like that. I wanna be _with_ you."

"If I take you back to my house," Hiratsuka said, "what are you gonna do when I'm at _work?_ "

"You can carry me."

"Oh, yeah, with your weird flower dick hanging out the whole way!"

"I'm getting better," Imaoka protested. "I could practice more. It just likes when you carry me."

"You," said Hiratsuka, "are a freak."

He was, actually, getting better at it. It helped that his lungs were used to switching on by now, so he didn't do the whole practically passing out thing anymore. His arms still stopped working once the dick came out—and so did his brain, which pretty much killed the conversation until Hiratsuka took care of it. Which he did, out of compassion, because the longer Imaoka's arms were out of commission the longer it took them to start up again. It was like a friendly kind of gesture on his part, the kind where if anybody else tried to do it he'd have to kick their ass. They were bound to do an inferior job. And anyway, Imaoka didn't want anyone else doing it. A guy had the right to decide who touched the family jewels in his hour of need. It was just an unspoken rule of manhood. Even when the family jewels were weird moving flower petals.

Having a naked mermaid lying there all trusting and desperate wasn't exactly the worst thing in the world, either. It was kind of a charge how this wasn't even a regular thing that any other mermaid could see underwater, it was some weird thing that only happened for _him—_ forget vulnerable, he had this _super-exposed_ mermaid lying there needing him, and hell: it wasn't like anyone else ever used this beach.

While he'd been thinking, Imaoka had been playing with his hand. Now he ran his pale, narrow tongue along the back of it.

"You're so warm. Like swimming into a sunpatch."

"Quit it," Hiratsuka said, not entirely minding but feeling like he should.

"And hairy."

Once he was done spitting out sand, Imaoka went on: "I didn't say it was bad."

"Would you shut up and let me think?"

"I can _tell_ what you're thinking about." He wriggled onto his back and grinned that weird lazy grin. Smug asshole. His gills always turned way pinker when he was excited, which Hiratsuka hadn't told him and wasn't about to.

He hadn't tried using his mouth again, but he had a weird habit of leaning in at the last second and getting his face messy. Once he'd wiped it off and tasted the back of his forearm with the usual thoughtful expression, he leaned back on his elbows and started in again.

"How come you keep calling mine a flower?"

"'Cause it looks like a flower," Hiratsuka said, still breathing a little heavily.

"What's a flower look like?"

"Like your dick, but it doesn't try to eat my face."

"I said I was sorry about that time," Imaoka said. "Take me to see a flower. You can carry me."

"The hell I can."

"You can put me in a tank. With wheels."

Hiratsuka sprinkled another handful of sand on his chest in a threatening kind of way.

"Why are you so obsessed with me taking you places?"

"I told you. I wanna be with you more."

Hiratsuka looked out at the sea. It was a view he'd been avoiding for a while; he wasn't sure how long.

"You can _swim_. Up here you can't even move."

Imaoka shrugged.

"You could be anywhere. Why do you want me dragging you around this shitty little island in a bathtub?"

Imaoka tilted his head to the side and peered up at him, confused.

"'Cause I like you?"

Hiratsuka blinked. Imaoka blinked his weird fish eyes back, very slowly. Then he sighed so hard his whole body seemed to deflate.

"I've been telling you the whole time."

"You said you wanted to learn about humans!"

"You're barely teaching me anything real. Why'd you think we keep mating?"

"Diplomacy," Hiratsuka said. "And stop calling it that."

"That's what it is."

"Look," he said. "You're having some trouble with your dick or whatever right now, but I assumed we'd get past this eventually and you'd move on once your education is finished."

"I _like_ you," Imaoka said. "I don't want to move on."

"Okay," said Hiratsuka, "but if that's true—" He paused. "I just thought you were a boy mermaid, is all."

"I am a boy mermaid."

"Then you don't know what you're talking about! You need a boy human and girl human before you can talk about liking someone. _That's_ where the mating comes into it."

Imaoka frowned. "That sounds really boring."

"Do _not_ try to tell me that boy mermaids can make babies together."

"I don't really care about eggs and stuff." He'd been inching closer and now he climbed into Hiratsuka's lap again and curled up. "Anyway, you're not a boy mermaid."

"Exactly," said Hiratsuka, putting his hands behind his back to keep them safe. "I am a _man_ human, seeking a woman human, because that's how humans do things."

"But I'm not a human," Imaoka pointed out. "Why should I do what humans do?" With the hands out of reach, he settled for licking a knee.

"Stop that."

"You didn't mind before."

"I thought you were just curious before! You led me to believe this was normal everyday mermaid stuff!"

"I never told you we did this all the time," Imaoka said. He was actually starting to look annoyed. "Why would we?"

"I assumed you were trying to steal my natural salts and oils," Hiratsuka muttered. "I was just being polite."

"First you say I'm trying to eat you." Imaoka's tail uncurled and the fin hit the sand with a slap. He'd never done that before, so Hiratsuka wasn't sure what it meant, but somehow it didn't sound good. "Now you think I go around trying to eat everyone I know." An ominous clicking sound started up in his throat.

"Listen," said Hiratsuka. "Listen. Stop clicking at me."

"Now you think I'm clicking _at you_."

"Listen," said Hiratsuka. "Humans don't fucking click! I don't know what that noise means, but if it's anything disrespectful you'd better stop or I'll have to kick your ass."

The clicking slowed as Imaoka's lip started to tremble.

"It means I'm not happy." Face screwed up into a full sulk, he buried his head in Hiratsuka's thigh and kept clicking mournfully. On the other side, his tail traced a few tragic circles in the sand.

"Stop that," Hiratsuka said again. He poked Imaoka and yanked his hair. The clicking got stronger, sending weird echoes through him right down to the bones. He let go of Imaoka's hair quickly and the clicking softened.

Fine. If Imaoka wanted to throw a weird mermaid tantrum, that was his choice as an adult man-fish. Once he was done making a fool of himself, Hiratsuka would get back to making him see reason. This just meant his arms were safe for the moment. He wondered if one good shove would be enough to roll Imaoka back down to the water, or if he'd need a few more to finish the job.

"Listen," he said, when he couldn't stand that damn clicking any longer. "I've decided to forgive you. I said I've _decided—_ "

"What for?" Imaoka looked up, miserable and dry-eyed. Maybe mermaids got sore throats instead of red eyes.

"For making my day really awkward." Before Imaoka could hide his face again, he hastily added, "And for misleading me. I get that you're going through some culture shock."

Imaoka was starting to fold in on himself, still clicking intermittently.

"I thought you liked me."

"Look," Hiratsuka said. "We've got these monsters on this island. I haven't mentioned them yet, but they might come eat you if you don't stop clicking." He hesitated, then risked an arm. "C'mon, sit up. You're gonna fall out if you keep squirming."

Imaoka didn't say anything, but he let himself be tugged up and rearranged into a seated position, tail curling gently around Hiratsuka's side. Hiratsuka circled his arms very carefully—into a ring, _not_ a hug—to keep him from getting out of order again.

"They have heads like crows and very good hearing," he went on. "And they love seafood."

Imaoka settled against his chest. "How big are they?"

"Bigger than me. I fought one to a standstill once, but it was a narrow victory." He lifted Imaoka's hair out of his face and gave him a very stern look. "So you better keep quiet, got that? I can't promise they remember their truce with me."

"'Kay."

He let his arms fall, and Imaoka drooped down with them, turning over onto his front once again and hiding his face against Hiratsuka's knee. He didn't click this time, but he didn't seem to have much energy.

It wasn't like Hiratsuka was enjoying this or anything, but it had fallen to him to explain the laws of nature to this clueless dope, and he was going to do his job. He gave up on the mental diagrams now and started to draw a chart in the sand. He drew a man and a woman with legs, then a man and a woman with fishtails. Then he added a second man with legs and another with a tail.

Imaoka raised his head.

"What're you doing?"

Hiratsuka looked at the six identical blobs.

"Nothing."

"Can I have your hand again at least?"

Hiratsuka let him start poking at it again. Life was an unsolvable riddle.

"One day," he said, "you're gonna know everything about humans, and you're gonna get bored with this island."

"The main thing you taught me is humans talk a lot," Imaoka said. "I don't see how you can be this bad at listening." He sighed again.

"Stop doing that," Hiratsuka said. "You'll blow your lungs out. Where'd you learn that?"

"It just feels natural around you."

"Shut up."

"I won't leave. I don't care if you run out of things to make up."

"Shut _up._ "

He tugged his hand away and flopped onto his back in the sand. Imaoka wriggled after him, big stupid tail dragging awkwardly across his body, and grabbed his shoulder, peering into his face.

"Your eyes are leaking," he said anxiously.

"Shut the fuck up."

"Are you okay?" He gripped the shoulder harder and peeled Hiratsuka's arm back as he tried to shield his eyes. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm gonna leave you up here for the seagulls."

Imaoka nosed at his ear, a little calmer.

"You're really okay?"

_Asshole._ What was the point of thoughts being on the inside if you couldn't hide them?

"I'm not gonna leave," Imaoka said again, like that was even important. 

Hiratsuka wiped his nose viciously and sat up, shaking Imaoka off his arm.

"Listen," he said. "If there's something real, real important in your mouth, can you keep those teeth out of the way?"

"We've gotta," said Imaoka. "You lose your tongue if you can't."

"And," Hiratsuka went on, "you guys don't do any, like—cuddly shit down there. Like, grabbing each other. Up top." He pinned him by the shoulders just to help paint the picture. 

The blush traveled all the way down to his gills. Bright red this time, not just pink.

"Uh-uh." He blinked. "How come my face is hot?"

"Shut up," Hiratsuka suggested, and kissed him.

"You're all scratchy," Imaoka said, after they'd gotten pretty thoroughly familiar with the cuddly shit. "If you had a tail I bet it'd be a shark one." He wiggled his own tail. "Everyone with stripes like these likes shark people a lot."

"Quit squirming."

"I told you, you're scratchy. My face hurts."

Hiratsuka ran a cautious hand over his upper lip—not that he believed it for a second—and rolled onto his side reluctantly.

"I don't want a tail. Personally, I think you guys got a raw deal. Legs are pretty much—"

"Perfect," Imaoka said, his gaze sliding downward. "I know." He squeezed Hiratsuka's ass thoughtfully.

"Look," Hiratsuka said, feeling very shaken and emotionally unsettled, "I don't think that part's supposed to get involved in this—kind of thing."

Imaoka dipped his head down and ran his tongue up the inside of Hiratsuka's thigh in this way that made his _spine_ stand on end practically, a weird shooting thrill all the way up to his chest. Too slow to be casual, too cautious to be serious. Staking out territory, was what what it was. His tongue was still as cool as ever, even after all that effort trying to warm it up.

"But the front part's okay, right?" He looked up, eyes showing through his hair, playful and eager and already knowing the answer.

Fucking _tease._

Hiratsuka struggled back up and crossed his legs, Imaoka following along with his head still glued to its new location, even when he took a knee to the face. 

"Next lesson," Hiratsuka said. (He'd kind of lost track of what number they were on.) "Humans have _limits—_ like, about once or twice a day, and I'm already up to my once."

"'Kay." Imaoka seemed untroubled. "You still taste nice." He examined the area. "You're right, it's only standing up a little bit."

"It's resting!"

"The skin's doing that thing." He stuck the thin tip of his tongue into the foreskin and came very dangerously close to nibbling.

"It's not doing that thing," Hiratsuka said through gritted teeth, when his vision cleared. "It's doing nothing. _This_ is normal. When it gets excited is when it does the thing."

A thought struck Imaoka.

"Does it taste different before and after? You should've let me do this from the start. I wasted a day." It should not be possible to look that blissfully happy while rubbing someone else's semi-hard prick all over your face. "Now you _have_ to take me home. I could do this every morning."

Dear god, he'd become unstoppable.

"I didn't notice you getting any less fat while we were making out."

"You could move your home here."

"Houses don't move. They're too heavy."

"You could make a new one."

"Absolutely not," Hiratsuka said, very firmly.

 

* * *

 

The house took longer to build than he'd expected, and Imaoka's offerings of driftwood and pebbles were less than useless, but he did get his dick sucked a whole lot, so it came out pretty much even.


	7. Chapter 7

 Some might say it was impractical to have your house open directly onto the water, but Hiratsuka had showed _them_ what for, because this house had two rooms. One to be warm in, and one that changed from floor to water about halfway through, with a little dock thing in the water for Imaoka to swim up to. He seemed to like it pretty well. There were some steps too, because he whined when they had to be in different rooms and it was easier to carry him if you just hopped in the water and grabbed him while he was at arm-level, instead of tugging him out and rolling him over the floor every time. You could also use the steps to get blowjobs on, but he left that part out of the tour.

"So why'd you pick the garbage beach, exactly?" Wakana asked. He was the only one who'd stayed for the extended tour, for some reason.

"The what beach?"

"The beach where all the garbage ends up floating to? 'Cause of the currents or whatever the hell?" He poked a doorframe and watched it wobble.

"I happen," said Hiratsuka, with all the dignity he could muster, "to enjoy the scenery."

"I just don't see what you're even planning to eat, if this is where you're fishing. Have you been here the whole time since you picked that up?"

"I have my ways."

It wasn't the beach, actually. He'd tried his best, but sand was an unfriendly surface to houses. This was the very tip of a little promontory close by, and he'd had a hell of a time excavating the ground away until it was shaped into a nice 凹. It had started out a pretty damn ugly shape, to be honest, but now it was nice and squared off, and the water had a place to go. There was nothing human ingenuity couldn't improve on.

It'd been hard to confront the door question after all that, but Imaoka insisted on watching as long as the sun was up, and—not to sound like a total jackass or anything—even though he wasn't helping at all, it kind of went easier whenever he was there.

That part didn't make it into the tour either. The reshaping-the-earth-itself bit was the kind of thing people turned into fairy tales, and Hiratsuka wasn't about to let his sound like one of those dumb ones where the hero needed _help._

"So, that's the end of the tour," he said. "Save your applause, please. The fish startle easily in these parts."

Wakana looked up at the roof, then down again at the waves rocking peacefully through the opening in the bottom of the half-wall that had been a complete pain in the ass to build.

"Dude, you're gonna die in this house."

"What the hell do you know?" Hiratsuka demanded. "Get out of my beautiful home before your negative energy ruins it. The ambiance is still settling."

"Yeah, yeah." 

Hiyama reappeared among the trees. (There wasn't really anything you could call a "path" leading to the village yet.)

"You coming, or do I have to drag you? Not _you_ ," he added, before Hiratsuka could express how very opposed he was to that idea.

"I dunno, Hiratsuka," Wakana said, inspecting the doorframe again, very thoughtfully. "I think you might've picked the wrong place to build. Sounds like you've got a seagull problem."

"Hilarious. Dinner happens at the same time every day, whether you're at the table or not."

"I don't hear any seagulls," said Hiratsuka, indignant. "I won't have you insulting my house over nothing."

Wakana closed his eyes for a moment, while Hiyama lifted his to the sky and sighed for some reason.

"If he's really set on moving here," Hiyama said, aiming the words at Wakana and only Wakana, "let him. I'm not walking all the way out here to deliver any more dinners."

Wakana stretched his arms over his head, very slowly—the way Hiratsuka did when he was faking not caring about something.

"Well, you heard him. No more free rides, man. Better get used to seagull meat if you're really sure about this." He pretended to yawn but didn't bother waiting for an answer before turning to catch up with Hiyama.

Hiratsuka watched them head back to the village, still bickering about something. For once, he felt like a conversation with Imaoka would have left him less confused.

* * *

"I think they're mating," Imaoka said later, next to the fire.

"The cicadas?"

"Your friends."

Hiratsuka stopped petting him. "I don't have friends. I have followers."

Imaoka sighed gently and took his hand, moving it down to press a kiss against the knuckle.

"From this afternoon."

"Oh. Them." He tried to follow Imaoka's baffling train of logic. "Mating? _All_ of them?!"

"The two at the end." Imaoka had the nerve to sound patient as he rubbed his face against the back of Hiratsuka's hand.

"That's insane," said Hiratsuka, refused to be enticed into starting up again. "I've known them for years." He closed it into a fist, and made a second one with his other hand just to be safe. 

Imaoka latched onto his petting arm and clung to it with both of his own. If he'd had legs he probably would've wrapped those around it too. It was always kind of weird how warm the human half of him was.

"They are. I can tell."

"They've never made a pass at _me_ ," Hiratsuka protested.

"Good."

"I'm just saying, if a guy was looking for another guy, I don't see how he could resist _this_."

"Human eyes don't work," said Imaoka, unusually decisive. "It's all that blinking you do. But," he added, "it's good they don't work. Nobody else found you before I did."

"This princess came through town once, actually," Hiratsuka said. "She said if it wasn't for her job she totally would've married me."

"If they did find you they wouldn't've kept you, though," Imaoka mused. "You're kind of awful."

"If you think I won't eat you for breakfast—"

"Not on an empty stomach. Have a real breakfast first." He was getting pretty damn complacent for somebody who couldn't walk.

"You know what I mean. And I _do_ mean it."

"You said you'd make me vegetables." Imaoka nudged up into the arm he wasn't holding onto, the sleeve falling over his face. "I wanna try them."

"You may live one more day," Hiratsuka allowed. "Just because it'd be a shame to waste the cooking lesson I have planned."

"Tell me something else about land people."

"So," he began. "This princess—"

"I don't like that one. Tell a different one."

It wasn't like he was taking requests (that showed a lack of firm, manly resolve), but the interruption reminded him of a different source of inspiration.

"Once you've tried vegetables, you're gonna be begging me to bury you in the ground so you can eat them every second of the day. I won't do it, though, 'cause that's a terrible idea. You've gotta wash 'em before they're okay to eat." The garden was coming in pretty nice out back. The dirt was kind of sandy out here but apparently some plants did very well in the face of adversity. They were kicking adversity's ass, just like Hiratsuka. So much like him, in fact, he was almost afraid they were kind of his children. "They're like plant babies, except they don't have souls, so they make good eating."

That was a comforting thought. Still, he was the one who'd put them in the dirt and raised them. He made a mental note to wash his hands carefully before working into the garden. Didn't need Imaoka fertilizing them by accident and tying him down with a bunch of merplant babies.

"Are they like seaweed? We grow seaweed sometimes."

"They are _nothing_ like seaweed. You'll wish seaweed was dead after you taste the kind of stuff we've got up here."

Imaoka sighed again, a happy one this time, and started to purr softly. Once he really got started it was enough to drown out the cicadas, but he seemed ready to go to sleep, so Hiratsuka let him keep going quietly instead of getting him worked up with more petting. He'd been on land all day, and he needed way more rest when his lungs got a workout. He still wasn't much used to it; he hated waking up and finding out he'd missed things. But he liked falling asleep by the fire now that he was used to the feeling of dry heat on his fish half.

Being the pillow was rough, but with a little straw and a blanket laid out on the floor, Hiratsuka was finding he got better sleep than he had in years. It wasn't exactly a futon, but why mess with what worked? He kept stroking Imaoka's hair, being careful not to lift him too much or hug too tight. It still set off the insta-boner sometimes when his guard was down—not all the way when he was this sleepy, just the dick and petals slipping out and lying there half-soft; and while he did like getting fondled to sleep sometimes, he wasn't doing the rough kind of purring that meant to start. Probably that was why mermaids didn't do much hugging. Maybe it was some kind of instinct thing that just hung around being embarrassing once a species got civilized. Like peeing yourself when you got scared. 

"I wanna fuck you in the water tomorrow," Imaoka said, very thoughtfully.

So much for sleeping.

"Why?" he demanded.

"You're making me breakfast. I should do something for you."

"Something for _you,_ you mean!"

"You'll like it." He gave his spine a long stretch, all the way down to the tip of the tail. "It's fun being in the water. I'll hold you up."

"You're tiny and weak." Hiratsuka reached down to replace the blanket. Idiot had stretched it right off himself.

"I'm not weak." The tail flexed again, uncomfortably powerful under his hand. "You taste really good. All salty. But everything's flatter in the air. I wanna taste you underwater. And you get this smell—I guess you don't notice it, but"—he wriggled a little, excitement starting to take over "—it's _so_ nice. I wanna get it all spread around me on the water."

"Look—"

"I wanna pump your cum through my gills," Imaoka said, continuing on the theme.

"Okay!" said Hiratsuka. "I get the idea." It wasn't like he was completely opposed, but he took a moment to consider his options. "I thought you weren't supposed to be up here. What if they smell us?"

"I kinda want them to."

Hiratsuka took another moment.

"We don't eat humans," Imaoka reminded him. "You won't smell like you're marinating or anything."

"Only if the weather's good. I'm not letting you get us hit by lightning."

"I think it's gonna be sunny," Imaoka murmured, head and shoulders warm in his lap. He didn't budge as Hiratsuka brushed aside the hair covering his eyes. Eyes shut against the firelight, he made a soft noise when a thumb grazed his eyelashes.

He'd used to startle pretty bad when that happened; the eyelashes were another thing that didn't see much use while he was in the water. But they'd gotten him used to a lot of things now. He was spending almost more time on land than in water.

And well, hell. Fair trade and everything.

"Yeah," Hiratsuka muttered, as the fire started to fade. "Probably will."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the house is fine and does not collapse because mermaid magic has blessed it.


End file.
